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How White House Reporters Can Reclaim Their Beat

Tips to “flip the script” and seize control from presidents, CEOs, and leaders of other institutions.

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Ron Fournier

July 24, 2014, 6:59 a.m.

Paul Far­hi of The Wash­ing­ton Postwrites today about a trend at the White House — and throughout journ­al­ism — that threatens the qual­ity and cred­ib­il­ity of news-gath­er­ing: Pub­lic-re­la­tions “mind­ers” are in­ject­ing them­selves in­to our in­ter­views with politi­cians, CEOs, and oth­er poli­cy­makers.

Mind­er mad­ness joins the surge of “back­ground brief­ings” and the de­cline of ac­cess to de­cision-makers as evid­ence that the White House — and oth­er big in­sti­ti­tu­tions — are ma­nip­u­lat­ing the press. It’s that, but it’s also something worse: It’s evid­ence that journ­al­ists are ced­ing con­trol when they should be seiz­ing it, ac­cept­ing canned news rather than break­ing it.

Far­hi writes, “Al­most every of­fi­cially sanc­tioned ex­change between re­port­ers and the pro­ver­bi­al ‘seni­or ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials’ is con­duc­ted in the pres­ence of a press staffer, even when the in­ter­view is ‘on back­ground,’ mean­ing the source will not be iden­ti­fied by name.”

Journ­al­ists tend to view mind­ers with sus­pi­cion, if not out­right alarm. A third party can al­ter any in­ter­ac­tion in un­fore­seen ways. One White House re­port­er notes with ir­rit­a­tion that mind­ers have some­times cut off con­ten­tious ques­tion­ing or oth­er­wise in­ter­rup­ted the flow of con­ver­sa­tion.

More broadly, journ­al­ists see it as part of a lar­ger of­fi­cial ef­fort to shape their cov­er­age, sim­il­ar to de­mands to ap­prove quotes be­fore they’re pub­lished or to keep even the most mundane in­form­a­tion off the re­cord.

“If you have a mind­er there, it sits in [a source’s] brain that they’re sup­posed to stay on mes­sage,” said Peter Baker, who cov­ers the White House for the New York Times. “They’re less likely to share something oth­er than the talk­ing points.” Hav­ing mind­ers around, Baker says, “is ob­vi­ously in­ten­ded to con­trol the mes­sage. Let’s put it this way: It’s not in­ten­ded to in­crease candor.”

Be­fore shar­ing a few les­sons that I learned the hard way on the White House and cam­paign beats, I should dis­pense with the caveats. First, an­onym­ous sources are a cru­cial way to un­cov­er news that gov­ern­ments, cor­por­a­tions, and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions seek to cov­er up. Second, brief­ings with an­onym­ous sources (“on back­ground”) ar­ranged by these en­tit­ies can oc­ca­sion­ally be re­veal­ing. Third, not all stor­ies re­quire ac­cess to a de­cision-maker, and con­duct­ing an in­ter­view with a PR “mind­er” in the room doesn’t have to curb the journ­al­ist­ic ex­per­i­ence.

More of­ten than not, however, re­port­ers are crippled by these and oth­er pub­lic-re­la­tions schemes. We whine and protest, we write ed­it­or­i­als and angry let­ters, but we don’t use the full range of journ­al­ist­ic lever­age to seize con­trol of the re­la­tion­ship. We don’t flip the script.

The White House is set­ting the ground rules for cov­er­ing the pres­id­ent. Why? Good re­port­ers con­trol the terms of play.

Many re­port­ers op­er­ate un­der the as­sump­tion that they need the co­oper­a­tion of a PR spokes­men more than the spokes­men need them. That’s wrong. We can do our jobs without so-called flacks.

Many ed­it­ors and re­port­ers are afraid to get beat on a story if they don’t play by the PR rules. Flout their rules. Make them fear you.

Back to Far­hi’s im­port­ant story. Deep in­side it, he tells read­ers that White House spokes­man Eric Schultz de­clined re­peated re­quests for an in­ter­view to dis­cuss the “mind­er” muddle. In­stead, Schultz is­sued a state­ment sug­gest­ing the mind­er op­er­a­tion is in the best in­terest of re­port­ers and the pub­lic — a laugh­able as­ser­tion.

I com­pli­men­ted Far­hi on Twit­ter for his piece, and asked why he pub­lished the state­ment. He replied.

In Far­hi’s de­fense, a story about White House me­dia strategy is ar­gu­ably rich­er with a canned quote from a White House flack. Far­hi made it clear to his read­ers that Schultz was short-chan­ging them.

Still, I say flip the script. Tell Schultz, “If you want your point of view in my story, re­turn my call.” That shifts the lever­age. He must de­cide how much he wants the Wash­ing­ton Post plat­form. (Pro tip: He wants it badly.)

Some re­port­ers ar­gued that Far­hi was ob­lig­ated to pub­lish the White House state­ment. Why? Un­less the state­ment suited his journ­al­ist­ic mis­sion — which is hold­ing the White House ac­count­able — why print it?

Schultz’s state­ment was a press re­lease. No news or­gan­iz­a­tion pub­lishes every White House state­ment. Pres­id­ent Obama has his own web­site. Schultz can post his state­ment there. In my opin­ion, Schultz should earn the way onto the The Wash­ing­ton Post‘s site with a simple tele­phone call.

A “no com­ment” doesn’t hurt your story. But it can hurt the people you cov­er. (Read this column and ask Sen. Joe Manchin’s com­mu­nic­a­tions team wheth­er he should have re­turned my call a week ago rather than hide be­hind a state­ment).

It’s OK to play hard­ball. Play fair. Be trans­par­ent and hon­est. But cov­er­ing mas­ters of the uni­verse isn’t, as they say, bean­bag.

On the is­sue of “mind­ers” raised in Fahri’s piece, I usu­ally don’t ob­ject when a spokes­man joins my in­ter­views, be­cause I won’t let them con­trol it. There is also something to be learned. A de­cision-maker who needs a PR babysit­ter is pro­ject­ing some level of weak­ness and/or lack of con­fid­ence — and I’ll in­ject that find­ing in­to my cov­er­age.

But some re­port­ers hate mind­ers. They can flip the script.

Again, this only works if you and your ed­it­ors agree that journ­al­ists set the ground rules, that it’s OK to an­ger your sources, and that this par­tic­u­lar story is im­port­ant enough to de­mand an in­ter­view. If a story is that im­port­ant and you settle for less, you’ve ceded con­trol. Worse, you’ve sold out the pub­lic.

There’s the prob­lem of de­cision-makers in­sist­ing that they only be quoted “on back­ground” (an­onym­ously), even when the re­port­er wants the quotes at­trib­uted (“on the re­cord”). In such cases, the an­swer is simple.

Re­mem­ber, a spokes­man gets paid to get his or her point of view in your story. They need you. Don’t cede that lever­age for any­thing less than the terms you need to serve your read­ers. Write a tough story, and they’ll call back de­mand­ing an up­date with their point of view. That’s when you po­litely re­mind them that they’re on the re­cord.

What can the me­dia do about the ex­plo­sion of “back­ground brief­ings”? Any­time you think one should be on the re­cord, stand up (or speak up) at the start of the brief­ing and po­litely in­form who­ever’s in charge that the event in “on the re­cord.” Don’t ask. Tell them.

I did this a few times, most mem­or­ably dur­ing the 2004 pres­id­en­tial cam­paign when Demo­crat­ic nom­in­ee John Kerry wanted to chat with re­port­ers aboard his plane. He wanted it to be “off the re­cord,” which means whatever he wanted to say could nev­er be re­por­ted. Years ago, I agreed to sim­il­ar terms aboard Air Force One with Pres­id­ent Clin­ton, and watched in hor­ror as com­pet­it­ors vi­ol­ated the terms. My ed­it­or wasn’t happy with me. With that memory, I po­litely told Kerry that I would be tak­ing notes and fil­ing.

Kerry had a choice. He could chat with us on my terms (a “win-win”) or walk away. He stormed back to his cab­in, and I got back to writ­ing an ana­lys­is of his flail­ing cam­paign.